“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Right after that Sue Watkins called from her home in upstate New York to tell us that she’d just received from Prentice-Hall her first printed copy of Volume 2 of Conversations With Seth. She’s to send us an autographed copy after more reach her. Both Jane and I congratulated her on producing a fine pair of books. Even though we could hardly be called impartial, we knew that in her long account of much that had taken place in Jane’s ESP classes, Sue had produced superior work both for herself and for us, through her viewpoint offering new dimensions and insights concerning what all three of us—four, counting Seth!—had been, and still are, trying to do. Our copy of Conversations did arrive from Sue early in October. Seeing it cheered Jane—yet my wife continued to hassle [as she put it] her efforts on Magical Approach, asking herself again and again whether she really wanted to do that book. Her intuitions always affirmed that she did. It was often difficult going for her, though: Magical Approach still wasn’t flowing the way she wanted it to.

Then on October 23 Jane’s creative contentions led to her “attend” material—in which she picked up from Seth that her only responsibility in life is to herself: “Attend to what is directly before you.” Seth told her that she bore no onus to save the world. In relief, Jane wrote a short poem to accompany Seth’s message, then wrote further that she “realized that like many I’d become afraid of faith itself.” I’ve presented this cluster of material in the frontmatter for Volume 1 of Dreams. Her insight helped both of us. However, she hadn’t had a session, regular or private, in over 10 weeks [since August 13], so on October 27 she recorded in her journal the continuance of her daily creative struggles: “And once again I’m way behind in sessions and writing. This A.M. I ‘worked’ from midnight to 3—without getting anything done. I wonder about the advisability of the entire project [Magical Approach]. Where had the magic gone? Where was my inspiration? Those were my thoughts when it occurred to me that I should be writing them down, because they’re part of the whole picture. I felt better….”

Following her latest self-renewal of faith, Jane started to notice some physical improvements. One very unusual way these showed themselves began on the evening of October 31, when four younger people who had been members of ESP class visited us from New York City.⁸ They’d been scouting the Elmira area for other ex-students, to see if any of them had old class tapes of Jane speaking for Seth and/or singing in Sumari; they had had some success in their searches, but we didn’t play any of the tapes that night.⁹

Jane and I thought it most interesting that within 29 days [in October] various events—the arrival of Volume 2 of Conversations, Jane’s coming through with her “attend” material and poetry, the visit of her former students, and even her contentions with Magical Approach—had helped her rejuvenate her sense of physical ease and well-being on at least three separate occasions. She wrote more notes, more poetry. We kept trying to encourage her new motions, of the kind described in Note 8, but they began to taper off.

7. In Chapter 2 of Dreams, in Volume 1, see Note 1 for Session 885, which we held on October 24, 1979. Through a series of misunderstandings, the people at Ankh-Hermes had published an abridged translation of Seth Speaks without having permission for the cutting from Jane and me. We still feel regret that the company had to go to all of that extra expense in order to publish a second edition of the book. I also wrote that “all concerned must wait for at least another year before a full-length version of Seth Speaks will be published in the Dutch language.” Actually, almost two years passed before we received our copies of the new edition.

“Some really beneficial and odd developments are taking place in my physical condition,” Jane wrote, “generally starting last Saturday night (October 31) when the kids visited from NYC—students I haven’t seen in nearly two years. During their visit I noticed that my right leg, propped up on the coffee table, would suddenly fall very quickly and unexpectedly to the floor. Then they left. When company had gone I talked to Rob and nodded and dozed—then again my leg suddenly dropped and entire body turned independently of my will or intent to the left. This happened several times. Then in a moment of dozing I suddenly found my body moving forward, half standing, with strong energy and more or less natural motion—all by itself.

“I did briefly give him a message (on October 23, 1981): Attend to what is before you, for it is there for a reason. In each person’s life, and in your own, at each and every point of your existence, the solutions to your problems, or the means of achieving those solutions, are always as apparent—or rather as present—within your days as is any given problem itself. What I mean is quite simple: The solutions already exist in your lives. You may not have put them together yet, or organized them in the necessary ways. The solutions in Ruburt’s case lie in all of those areas with which you are normally concerned—the mail, the sessions, the psychic abilities. When you attend to what is there with the proper magical attitude of mind, then the altered organizations can take place.